No Windows 7 Blu-Ray Support

APC are reporting that Microsoft will not include Blu-Ray playback capabilities in Windows 7. Adding Blu-Ray support to Windows would increase the costs of the operating system by about $30. The real question is if missing Blu-Ray support is really a kill criteria for an operating system. As of now it surely isn’t with DVD sales being stronger than ever and Blu-Ray sales still lagging behind by a huge margin. The amount of users who would use Windows 7 to play Blu-Ray movies can surely be neglected at this point as most hardware Blu-Ray players for personal computers are expensive and not 100% compatible with all Blu-Ray features.

Users who want Blu-Ray playback on their computer systems can purchase a third party software which will not cost that much more than the projected $30 that universal Blu-Ray support would cost. Everyone else will be happy that they do not have to pay for a feature that they would never use.

The majority of Windows XP users learned to live without DVD playback support for a long time and they did not have a problem finding third party software to fill the gap. If the demand is there free third party solutions will appear that can be used to play Blu-Ray movies on Windows 7.

well thay use to be but the format wars r over i had blue ray fore 2 years fore the 1st year it was a nightmar but now the format wars r over i dont know what to do with out my blue and geting win 7P its better but trying to dullboot vista just fore the blueray lol. when u get a blue ray working geed i dont go back to dvd but fore the older moves it is sunning res on a 27″ dvd looks like a cheep coppy lol well hope u find out some day but i try to buy things in blue ray ps sorry fore the bad spelling

I HAVE a Blu-Ray player and would willingly pay the extra Â£21 ($30) if it were avaliable as an extra edition say like Windows 7 pro.Thus giving the extra option to thoes who would like to see this feature.I would like to use the “MEDIA CENTRE(CENTER)” feature in Vista now as it nicely oraganises my foldes(VIDEO,PICTURES and MUSIC) so it can all be controlled from one place and not use third party software.

I would rather it not be included for the reasons mentioned.Â DVD wasn’t included but when you bought a DVD burner you typically got decoder software included and had the cost of licensing included.Â Why make me pay for the BD license if I don’t have a BD player?Â I probably won’t even be getting one anytime soon as I keep all of my media on a server, not on discs.Â Perhaps if and when the market becomes saturated with this as a standard media then I will buy a BD drive and the requisite software but for now it would be a waste of my money.Â

Also they should be concerned with keeping the OS costs down as low as possible.Â Apple can make their money back on marked-up hardware but Microsoft only licenses software and needs to sell as many copies as they can.

Since Microsoft was one of the supporters of HD-DVD on the Xbox 360 I wonder how much of this is sour grapes on Microsoft’s part. If Blu-ray was included in Windows 7 I’d imaging it would have given a big boost to Blu-ray and from a disk sales view perhaps a free license could be issued as a loss leader, but then again perhaps they’d look at hardware sales instead.

Microsoft is marketing this OS as more than just an OS, but as an integrated Media Center. Using the flawed logic of not including DVD in XP is wrong as then it was Gaming/Productivity. Now it is a Media/Gaming/Productivity OS.

Microsoft already sells Vista in tiers (eg. Ultimate), and should do the same for those users who plan on using Blu-Ray. I for one, do not want to have extra software on my computer, and despite what the majority of the world thinks, I have far more confidence in Microsoft’s ability to provide a stable product than I do in some 3rd party developer who will not bother to integrate it into Media Center.

Without the integration, I will continue to use my PS3 as a media center instead of my preference to use a Media Center PC.

COMPLETELY agree. I run Vista MCE, and HATE the fact that I have to run a 3rd party blue ray player (which is very bugy at best!) I was hoping and praying that W7 would have some sort of option to do blue ray decode. This is a deal breaker for me!

Blu-Ray sales are not the issue. Projected sales are the issue. Retailers have to worry about floor space. Carrying identical movies in two formats is simply expensive. The industry will be more than happy if DVD dies. They see Blu-Ray as a solution to piracy.

What is the expected lifespan of Windows 7? If industry experts are predicting that Blu-Ray will overtake DVD within the next 18-24 months, then Microsoft’s OS in its prime will be incompatible with the prevailing disc format.

I have no problem watching the individual files on a Blu-Ray disc, since Windows supports the format. But I can’t watch it with menus, etc. Ironically, the DRM in Windows 7 is so overblown that if I want to watch a legitimate HD disc on my BD drive with licensed software, it ends up giving me a message about the resolution being cut down due to DRM and I lose the HD. There is software that fixes that problem. The ironic part is that its primary purpose is to bypass the copy protection, so DRM has the opposite of its intended effect for users like me. If they had native Blu-Ray support, presumably this issue never would have come up.

The other question is why they left out HD-DVD. People with collections have as many discs as before, and the number of discs is increasing as old inventory gets sold. The software is static, unlike BluRay which will need ongoing patches, so there’s no ongoing development cost for HD DVD.

You are probably thinking that HD-DVD is dead. I thought the same thing. Good Blu-Ray drives read HD-DVD also, and companies would have to spend money to drop hardware/firmware support. When I bought a drive, I didn’t give any thought to HD-DVD. I later realized that HD discs are now $5 each wish shipping, so I’m not going to spend more for the DVD or Bu-ray. It would be nice to have HD integration into Media center and I doubt it would cost them much.

This is stupid. There are lots of things in windows that you do not use, yet it is still there. You can’t be a “Media” player if you don’t play all the media. Instead of media player perhaps it should be called windows we are mad we lost and we are going to take our toys and go home player. Most people in the us don’t use most of the fonts that come with windows and they are not there unless you need them. Not to support blueray is just a sign of immaturity. It is silly. Microsoft got it’s feelings hurt and now they don’t want to play anymore. They should grow up.

i had win vista whe werst so ever im glad to go to win 7 but mad i payed over 300$ and can play blue rays wahts next paying per month fore the os there geting to greedy. iv ben trying to get the blue ray playing to work fore 2 days not on win 7 downloading cant do it. i got a lot of blue rays and cant even use them no more with out tacking win 7 off my comp. were going back in tecknolgy win 7 ill stack with my xp its the same thing as 7. i only went to vista coz of the blue ray if cant do that y got win 7